How Virtual Reality is disrupting the fitness industry

Virtual Reality is the most exciting thing to ever hit the personal fitness industry.

We all set out with the best intentions of going to the gym – only for something more appealing to crop up or tiredness (read: lack of motivation) to kick in.

But what if, instead of sitting on a rowing machine facing a blank wall, you could heighten things by rowing down the Amazon River; rather than a spin class, you could cycle on Saturn – yes, as in the planet. Would that motivate you more?

Anyone blinded by perceptions and stigmas associated with Virtual Reality (VR) – not to mention those bulky headsets – is missing out on the most exciting thing to ever hit the personal fitness industry.

A few months back, Brit Aaron Puzey cycled the length of Britain (1450km) without leaving his living room, using a ‘Gear VR’ headset and Cycle VR with his smartphone and a Bluetooth cadence monitor. In America, Tim Donahey lost 6.5kg in 50 days dancing up a sweat while playing Audioshield on his HTC VIVE in his bedroom. VR Fitness is growing and it’s not just geeks who are into it.

Michael Schmidt, CEO of hardware manufacturer Icaros, believes VR’s the disruptive motivator everyone needs to exercise. His company’s fitness system, described as ‘simulating skydiving crossed with planking’, is a prime example of this belief. “In a gym, in the same spot, workouts can extend into areas where only outdoor sports used to, involving balance, efficiency of movement and coordination. Gyms will change into places with high levels of entertainment for the sporting person,” says Schmidt, “so you can do things in small spaces that were impossible previously.”

He believes one of the biggest benefits to working out in VR is the instant access to quality analysis of your body’s movement by a trainer, who’s always flexible to your schedule – because he or she is virtual.

Kain Tietzel, the CEO of Sydney-based virtual reality studio Start VR, suggests that we think of VR like a psychological platform. “VR can change your mind,” he says. “The psychological opportunities mean I could workout at home but be in a rainforest, and I could have a personal coach there that’s motivating me. And I could have live information providing me with immediate feedback, showing me what my performance is doing, showing me what I’m going to look like in a year if I work at this rate five days a week.”

Put simply, VR has the ability to change how we approach everything in this field. And contrary to common belief, it’s much more than just a visual experience. “With Icaros, the simulation of weight is done by resistance through hydraulics or other electromagnetic systems. It’s combined with suit-like geometries, which allow you to wear it as an exoskeleton that enables you to ‘virtually’ simulate everything physically,” says Schmidt.

Tietzel furthers VR’s sensory capacity: “The next big leap is around haptic devices to reinforce physicality in the virtual world. HTC Vive already has Trackers to put on, say, barbells. So when you lift them in the physical world, it’s represented in the virtual world too.”

Another notable advancement in VR fitness is the use of photogrammetry. At the moment, animation is mostly used, but the capture of video for VR training purposes will “bring real world locations and mix them into a game engine environment, so it feels like it’s real,” adds Tietzel.

And advances in technology predict today’s headsets will evolve into a contact lens within 10-15 years.

“Or even faster – if there’s the demand for it,” says Tietzel. “Like the early stages of the internet, VR’s one of these societal-changing technologies – you don’t know what it’s going to mean, but the possibilities are endless.”